Now, the UK team that many — most? — had written off as too young, too soft and too weak of will after a late-season road loss at struggling Arkansas stands on the verge of ending UK's historic 12-year Final Four drought.

If the 2010-11 Wildcats can turn the tables on one more historic hex Sunday by beating North Carolina in the East Regional finals, will there have ever been a more dramatic UK run to the national semifinals?

No.

Or a more unlikely team pulling it off?

Probably not.

"I feel a lot of people have not respected us," said forward Terrence Jones. "I think people wrote us off before we got to this point."

Somehow, it just has to be North Carolina as the one last obstacle standing between UK and its long-delayed return to college basketball's promised land.

"We definitely owe them one," Kentucky center Josh Harrellson said Saturday of the Tar Heels. "We have a grudge."